


princess cards

by Ruriruri



Category: David Bowie (Musician), The Rolling Stones
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:47:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26737606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruriruri/pseuds/Ruriruri
Summary: The Stones are a machine. Part and parcel. Can’t run a car without an engine, but maybe the odometer’s all right to go without. Maybe the radio. Mick’s aware of which parts he can barter off and which he can’t, and yet he’s hemorrhaging the band anyway, just because he thinks it’s his to bleed dry. He doesn’t realize he’s a piece of the machine; he thinks he’s the goddamn driver. During the recording of Dirty Work, Keith confronts Mick.
Relationships: David Bowie/Mick Jagger, Mick Jagger/Keith Richards
Comments: 12
Kudos: 31





	princess cards

Keith’s seen it a million times.

Keith’s seen it once.

Adoration’s so strange. Bizarre, really. He remembers, vaguely, the first time it made him feel—oh, old and out of time—it was when a bodyguard roused him up in some club, told him someone wanted to meet him. Not a fan—well, _a_ fan—but another guitarist from some up-and-coming band. He can’t recall the name, just the face, terribly pockmarked and foundation-smeared, a little blood seeping from his nose as he’d stumbled forward for a handshake. And Keith had realized, after, that kid wasn’t his contemporary so much as his replacement.

A decade on and that kid’s probably strung out somewhere. Meanwhile, Keith feels more archaic than ever, no matter how much he insists that another smash like _Some Girls_ lies right on the horizon, that the Stones still define rock and roll. He’s starting to get the craggy features of one of those carved-out monuments over in the States. He’s starting to get tired and he’s starting to get clean and Mick’s back to seeking out his own old fan, chasing him down like an amphetamine injection. Except it’s no chase when that old fan invites him, every time.

Enamored, that’s it. David’s enamored. Keith can’t imagine why after so long. And Mick, it feeds him, feeds his stupid ego fit to bursting to still have David wanting him, when David’s flickering comet of fame’s never shone brighter. The weirdness and far-flung androgyny of this era fits him more fully than the sixties and seventies ever did. David used to be outré and avant-garde, and now—now he’s pure pop, an icon, while the Stones crumble like relics in a forgotten temple. Most people of the Hollywood lot, the rockstar lot, they know when to unhitch from a falling star, when to find another whale to leech life from, like any self-interested remora. David, though, doesn’t give a rat’s ass. To him, Mick’s still the same endlessly fascinating hero.

“I thought,” David told Keith once, more than ten years back, “when I first saw you in concert, when I saw Mick—‘this is the future of music, I’m seeing it right here.’” Keith had snorted, and David added, “No, I’m serious. ’63 it was. You were opening for Little Richard.”

“That’s right.”

“Some old man in the crowd shouted, ‘Get yer ’air cut.’ And Mick, I’ll never forget it, he shouted back, ‘What, and look like you?’”

That, Keith didn’t recall. The concerts, even the tours themselves had long since started blurring up and melting like chalk drawings on pavement. But he’d known it meant something to David, and so he’d nodded.

“I wanted to be that sharp onstage. I’ve borrowed a lot from him, I suppose,” and Keith had nodded again as David kept going, either indifferent to his disinterest or just unaware of it. They got like this, the fans, whether they carried gold cards or bus cards. “I always tell him, though, ‘that’s one of yours.’ And if he’s ever copped something off me, well, I’d be flattered—”

“I don’t reckon he has,” Keith had said, and the conversation faded. There’d been girls and blow and Keith hadn’t had occasion to think of David further. He hadn’t thought it meant anything, then. David was newer to the scene, someone Keith was certain Mick would never give more than a cursory glimmer of his attention to. _I always tell him_ , as if they met up at the pub every Friday. The absolute nerve.

He hadn’t thought Mick would go for it. Hadn’t felt there was anything fascinating about some out-there singer with daft lyrics and wilder makeup than the Stones would ever bother with. But Mick had been fascinated—fascinated by the ego-stroke, more like—and he’d gone for him as single-mindedly as he’d gone for anyone else. That obnoxious swagger Keith’s endured out of Mick since primary school had turned on David like a cop’s headlights, and David, like any fan, had melted in the glare.

David should know better by now. No, _Mick_ should know better by now.

But Mick doesn’t know better, and he won’t know better. Mick keeps looking past the band for everything. Like the Stones are a stepladder instead of an anchor. That underhanded deal with the record label, three solo albums. Might as well have been thirty pieces of silver. And Keith knew then that Mick would sell him out any fucking way he could, on tour or in bed. He knew. He knows.

The Stones are a machine. Part and parcel. Can’t run a car without an engine, but maybe the odometer’s all right to go without. Maybe the radio. Mick’s aware of which parts he can barter off and which he can’t, and yet he’s hemorrhaging the band anyway, just because he thinks it’s his to bleed dry. He doesn’t realize he’s a piece of the machine; he thinks he’s the goddamn driver.

Looking at Mick now, right now, that smarmy face, the curl of his lip, all that’s far too familiar, Keith feels like he’ll vomit. But he tilts his head instead, glance dropping to Mick’s collar, shirt cuffs, rings, before lifting back up for an accusation.

“You’ve got no material for us.”

“I have material—” Mick starts.

“You used it all up on yourself already.”

Mick starts to smile. That old self-assured look that makes Keith want to pummel him. Here he is, listening to the publicity and the yes-men telling him that on his own, he’ll be bigger than Jackson. As if he could really compete with a kid fifteen years younger. It’s a joke, it’s all a rotten joke, and if there were any justice in the world Mick’s solo album would be molding in his garage instead of flying off the fucking shelves.

But no, Keith’s sure Mick thinks he should be grateful for his presence at all. It’s only the third time in ten days of recording that Mick’s so much as shown up, much less had something to offer besides jabs and a lot of lounging. Keith’s caught him after the session, caught him before he could get to his limo, and now they’re in his instead, the leather seats cold and cloying, the tinted windows a testament to an earlier time.

“Doesn’t matter. I can write more.”

“You don’t want to write more. You’ve made that clear enough.” Keith exhales. “What’ll it be, Mick? Go back to making films? Triple-threat us, will you? You’d make a fucking horrible Shirley Temple now.”

Mick doesn’t so much as flinch. The man’s got a padlocked drawer where his heart ought to be, nothing but ego pumping the blood in his veins. Anytime, anytime, the façade’ll break—Keith’s waiting on it—Keith’s waiting for him to falter—but it doesn’t. Mick’s ex-lax smooth. Mick’s so damn smart and so damn certain, even when he’s not. He’s carried the band on bravado, fooled a thousand crowds into believing in him. He won’t fool Keith. He can’t fool Keith.

“Might have the curls for it.” His mouth crooks up again. “Really, Keith, you’re sore over nothing.”

“Am I?”

“You are. We’ll make the record.” Mick clasps his fingers together, turns them with his palms out, and stretches. “We’ve hardly ever been all together for any of them. You know that. It’s always been sewn up from the pieces.”

“That isn’t going to be good enough anymore.”

“We’ll know when it comes out, whether it’s good enough.”

“Is that your answer?”

“It’s my answer,” Mick says, calmly. “We won’t _fail_ , Keith. We’ll have another top-ten album, even if—”

“Even if it’s shit, is that what you’re telling me?”

“If it’s shit, work harder. Bring in more of the session players, it’s cheaper than waiting on us all to be—”

“ _Mick!_ ”

He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand. That’s what Keith has to believe, because the alternative is that Mick gets it and doesn’t give a fuck. The alternative is that Mick wants to destroy the only constant in both their lives.

Mick, predictably, doesn’t yell back. He just sits there, looking at Keith like he’s on the border of amused. Like Keith’s just another reporter he’s being smarmy to. Even that shit’s wearing thin these days. They’re in front of reporters twenty years old now, those snide brats on MTV with their teased hair and acid-washed jeans, kids that don’t remember Ed Sullivan and were barely alive for the moon landing. Mick’s toothless around them and yet he still plays all the old cards. He can’t treat them like that.

He can’t treat Keith like that.

“Keith, really, now,” Mick says, finally. Those blue eyes of his—never warm or even a pretty color, just ordinary—something about them shifts, maybe softens. For a second, Keith could fool himself into believing he’s sincere. “It can’t be the album pissing you off.”

“You don’t think that’s enough?”

“No.” Mick tilts his head just-so, as though he’s certain he knows everything Keith ever said or did. “No, it’s David riling you up.”

“I don’t care who you take to bed.” Keith forces a smile. “You’ll only keep getting worse. Have to stoop to sleeping with groupies that still think you’re brilliant—waste away borrowing someone else’s shine—”

“How dramatic.”

“It’s true. I know exactly how you are.” Keith waits on a dismissal that doesn’t come, and when it doesn’t, he plows ahead. “You think you’re bigger than us, don’t you? Who put that in your head, Mick? The execs you’re palling around with? The little starlets you fuck? Or—”

“Bigger than the Stones?”

“Yes, bigger than the—”

“Or bigger than us?”

That stops Keith dead. He can feel how nakedly open his own face has gotten, and he despises it. He tries to smooth it over, reaches his arm to rest against the window, feigning ease he doesn’t have. He doesn’t answer.

“Nothing’s bigger than us, Keith.”

“Prove it.”

Mick smiles. He doesn’t look half as old as he deserves to with all the shit he’s taken. Even now, there’s a lazy grace to every movement. His dry, chapped lips against Keith’s. His hand sliding down from Keith’s collar, down his shirt, to his belt buckle, undoing it, unzipping his jeans. When Mick drops to his knees, there’s no loss of power, no submission. When Mick’s swollen red lips wrap around his dick, Keith’s anger starts to fade.

It could be ’62 again. He could be playing the juke joints with Mick self-assured and comfortable by his side. The Mick he believed in, the Mick he knew was unmatched. Caught up in all that charm and charisma, not like Bowie or the girls, on a deeper level than all that because he understood him. He knew where Mick came from, knew his faults and insecurities but didn’t believe in them. He knows Mick, that Mick, better than anyone.

It could be later than that. They could be the Glimmer Twins trading lyrics, running through riffs, sleeping with each others’ girlfriends. Never one without the other. Not a pair, not Mick and Keith but something greater. Something incomparable. Later. Later. The memories collapse and reshape like kaleidoscope beads, each shift creating a different image. Later. On top of the world. Sneering their way through critiques and scandals and jail and rehab. Vibrant. Beautiful.

_(nothing’s bigger than us, keith)_

He wants it to be true. God, he wants it to be true.

Even when Mick’s mouth is shut, Keith’s eyes are still on him, captivated. Even at his most incensed, he can’t tear himself away. He supposes he never could. He comes with a grunt, Mick taking in every drop. Mick’s slow to rise back up, resting his hands on Keith’s thighs and just looking up at him for a few moments. Maybe it’s just the lousy afterglow, but Keith can’t read any of those old expressions in his face, the ones he was so certain of only minutes ago. The amusement and smarminess. They’re gone now.

Mick gets half to his feet finally, leaning forward. He pushes another kiss against Keith’s mouth, deep enough that Keith could swear he tastes the remnants of his own come in Mick’s spit. Keith closes his eyes, lets Mick climb into his lap the way he’s done a thousand times before, his murmurs mixing with the low grumbles of the limo engine, and Keith lets himself believe it all over again.


End file.
